In a semiconductor-relating manufacture apparatus or the like, a temperature control device for liquid medicines, which controls temperature of the corrosive liquid medicines used for a semiconductor processing by contacting the corrosive liquid medicines with a heat-transmitting plate where a thermo-module is in close contact therewith and fixed thereto, which is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-67717 (patent document), is known. In the temperature control device for liquid medicines, a member that comes in contact with the liquid medicines is constructed with a fluorine resin having a good chemical resistance.
A construction of the temperature control device for liquid medicines described in the patent document is explained below using the reference numerals used in the patent document. A flow path (10) for the liquid medicine is formed at both of front and back surfaces of a flow path block (1) that is formed of a fluorine resin. A sealing portion (9) for sealing between a periphery of the flow path (10) and heat-transmitting plates (2a and 2b) is formed with a fluorine resin (21) having a C-shaped cross-section and an elastomer (20) having a rectangular cross-section that is enclosed in the fluorine resin (21). The sealing portion (9) is inserted into a circular groove formed at a periphery of the flow path (10) positioned at both of the front and back surfaces of the flow path block (1).
In this construction, it is required to seal two places, namely, a place between the fluorine resin (21) constructing the sealing portion (9) and the heat-transmitting plates (2a and 2b), and a place between the fluorine resin (21) and a groove bottom of the circular groove in the flow path block (1). Accordingly, there is a structural risk in which the liquid medicine might leak out unless the two places are simultaneously sealed by taking a device such as that a plurality of concentric projections (22) are respectively formed at a side of heat-transmitting plates (2a and 2b) of the fluorine resin (21) and a side of the groove bottom of the circular groove opposite thereto. As a result, the structure of the sealing portion (9) becomes complicated and thereby not only a manufacture cost of a heat exchanger increases but also the temperature control device for liquid medicines using the heat exchanger becomes expensive.
In addition, in a case that the sealing portion (9) of the flow path block (1) is constructed by means of separately inserting the fluorine resin (21) into the circular groove, a slight plastic deformation sometimes occurs in the flow path block (1) and the fluorine resin (21) of the sealing portion (9) due to a thermal deformation of the fluorine resin (21) caused along with a repetition of a cooling operation or a heating operation on the liquid medicine that flows through the flow path (10), and the fluorine resin (21) sometimes moves out of alignment in the circular groove. Thereby, it is also considerable that the projection (22) formed in the fluorine resin (21) is worn. Consequently, there is a possibility that a sealing characteristic of the sealing portion (9) cannot be secured.